1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to a charging apparatus for charging a hard gelatin capsule (hereinafter, merely called "the capsule") with a certain form of filling, and more particularly to a charging apparatus for charging the capsule with pharmaceutics or foodstuffs in powder, granule or liquid form, continuously in constant amounts.
2. Description of the prior art
As well-known, capsules charged with medicine as well as tablets and pellets are at present generally used as oral medicine in the field of medicament.
Such a capsule charged with medicine is obtained by charging the pharmaceutics in powder, granule or liquid form, at a predetermined amount into a small vessel made of gelatin, that is, an empty capsule, comprising a tubular body portion which is usually open at one end and domically closed at the other end and a cap portion which is the same in shape as the body portion and of a slightly larger inner diameter than an outer diameter of the body portion, the body and cap being coaxially coupled with each other (i.e., the open end of the body is inserted into the open end of the cap). The pharmaceutics are charged into the capsule at high speed and automatically in continuation by use of an apparatus usually called a capsule charging apparatus.
The capsule charging apparatus has hitherto been put in practical use in various models. Furthermore, various improvements have been proposed aiming at high speed charging (improved processing ability), improvement in charging accuracy and/or miniaturization of apparatus, which are disclosed in, for example, the Japanese Patent Publication No. 49-38813 and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 61-213050. The well-known capsule charging apparatus of these prior applications are so constructed that in order to ensure a space for supplying filling onto the bodies of capsules in the charging process, separated caps are grouped into a plurality of members and each group is temporarily moved upwards from the bodies, or while keeping the caps as they are, the bodies are projected in the radial direction of a rotary member for containing them and temporarily separated from the caps.
Accordingly, the conventional capsule charging apparatus nearly always attains the object of charging the filling at high speed, but it is inevitable to make the apparatus large-sized as a whole, and it is largely inconvenient for over all maintenance to adjust the apparatus when the applied capsules are changed in the size.